The Foreign Office (FCO) has launched disciplinary action against a member of staff after a somewhat surprising headline appeared on its website today.
The announcement that the FCO has pledged an additional £2.2 million in funding to the World Service was titled: “Massive U-turn on BBC World Service funding”.
Obviously not the kind of language government departments normally clothe their massive U-turns in.
A spokesperson for the FCO said: “A web article with an incorrect and inappropriate title was up on the FCO website for 10 minutes this morning. That title absolutely did not represent the views of the FCO. This error has now been corrected and disciplinary procedures have been launched.”
Full Journalism.co.uk story on the World Service funding announcement at this link.
The vigil will take place at 1pm on the steps of the World Service building, Bush House.
Reports from the Tajikistan news agency Press.tj on 18 June, accused the BBC correspondent of being a member of banned Islamist group Hizbut-Tahrir.
According to the BBC, Usmonov was brought to his home by security agents and appeared to have been beaten up. The agents then searched his home and took him away.
The BBC has repeatedly called for Usmonov’s release, claiming that the accusations against him “represent a breach of legal practice and a serious violation of presumption of innocence”.
The New Scientist leads the shortlist for this year’s Association of Science Writers’ Awards.
The awards, organised by the Association of British Science Writers, are divided into four categories: Best news item; best feature, best scripted/edited television programme or online video; best investigative journalism, and best newcomer.
The ABSW has also added a new radio or podcast prize this year, sponsored by the Royal Society.
New Scientist holds two out of the three nominations in both the news and feature categories. Freelancer Shaoni Bhattacharya is nominated for ‘Tracking the Rhino Killers’ and New Scientist staff reporter Jessica Hamzelou is nominated for ‘Too Young to Know Better’. They will compete against the Independent’s science editor Steve Connor, who is nominated for ‘Fabricated Quote Used to Discredit Climate Scientist’.
Bhattacharya is also nominated in the feature category for ‘Murder in the Bat Cave’, published in New Scientist. She will go up against the magazine’s Brussels correspondent Debora McKenzie, nominated for ‘Living in Denial: Why sensible people reject the truth’, and David Adam for ‘The Hottest Year’, published in Nature magazine.
Another New Scientist reporter, Linda Geddes is nominated in the investigative category for ‘Between Prison and Freedom’, and the magazine’s careers editor Jessica Griggs is nominated for best newcomer.
Geddes will compete for the investigative prize against a team entry from freelancer Philip Carter and British Medical Journal assistant editor Deborah Cohen, and freelancer Fred Pearce for a climate change article in the Guardian.
Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy has an good post up on those awkward questions that tend to come toward the end of an interview, like asking Brown about bullying, Trump about toupées, or Pryce about penalty points.
Somehow the slightly awkward ones often fall on my days in the chair – those interviews about one thing with somebody currently famous for another, when colleagues say “obviously you’re going to ask about the sex change” as I walk into the studio when we are really supposed to be talking about credit default swaps.
Journalists at Newsquest titles in South London will go on strike for four days next week, from Monday 27 to Thursday 30 June.
The announcement follows a two-day strike last week. Staff are in dispute with the publisher over plans for a reduction in editorial space, redundancies across all sections of editorial, a review of a two per cent pay rise and an office relocation.
NUJ mother of chapel Thais Portillo-Shrimpton said today that staff had not heard from management since last week’s strike.
NUJ negotiator Jenny Lennox said: “We’ve had a very successful two-day strike last week, and it is worth noting that a dozen journalists have joined the union since dispute began. This reflects the deep anger of journalists employed by Newsquest at their bosses’ determination to avoid consulting with staff on the future of their papers.”
At the end of May, union members Newsquest titles in the area, which covers Surrey, Sutton and Twickenham, voted almost unanimously for strike action, with 22 out of 23 returns of a ballot in favour.
Staff have also been working to rule since 15 April.
A journalist working for the Guardian in Pakistan has been badly beaten by men in police uniforms, according to the newspaper.
According to the report, Waqar Kiani, a 32-year-old local journalist, was stopped while driving through Islamabad and beaten with wooden batons and a whip.
The alleged attack follows an account, written by Kiani and published five days before the attack, of torture and abduction by suspected Pakistani intelligence agencies.
The attackers then reportedly said: “You want to be a hero? We’ll make you a hero”, and: “We’re going to make an example of you.”
Kiana told the Guardian: “I don’t feel I did anything wrong. Journalists can’t be silent forever in Pakistan,” he said. “If we don’t bring up the facts, then it’s no longer journalism – we become spokesmen of the government.”
This is the second time that Kiani has been targeted, according to the Guardian, which reported last week that he was abducted from central Islamabad in July 2008 and taken to a safe house where interrogators beat him viciously and burned him with cigarettes.
Earlier this month, Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad, who was investigating links between the military and al Quaeda before his death, disappeared. He was found dead two days later.
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency has been widely accused of being behind the death but has fiercely denied any involvement. Note: we also recommend trying the VAT calculator from our developer Antony Kidless. This handy online tool will help you calculate tax in one click.
Last week, Guardian journalist and newly-elected Labour councillor for Southwark Rowenna Davis used Twitter to liveblog the heart operation of a two-week-old girl at Great Ormond Street hospital.
Her updates were also posted on the Guardian’s NHS liveblog alongside photos she took during the surgery (see above) and tweets from followers.
The comments that follow the CiF post are almost overwhelmingly negative, with Davis’ live coverage of the surgery called, “mawkish”, “ghoulish”, “a stunt”, “revolting sensationalism”, and more.
An interesting point of comparison for the coverage, which has been raised in the CiF comment thread, is broadcast, but it is hard to see people reacting quite the same way about a fly-on-the-wall documentary.
A few commenters suggested the problem with Davis’ liveblog was that it was live, and that the risk to the girl’s life made that inappropriate (according to Davis the operation carried a 1 or 2 per cent risk). Whereas a documentary, commenter davidabsalom said, would be recorded in advance.
But Channel 4 screened a series of programmes in 2009 that showed live surgery, during which viewers were invited to interact with the surgeons using Twitter, email and the telephone.
Channel 4’s David Glover said at the time that the programme was designed to “demystify surgery, encourage discussion and help viewers to understand their own bodies, as well as showing the care, dedication and skill that goes into modern surgery”.
Ofcom archives show no record of any complaints about the programme (less than 10 complaints are not recorded).
The Surgery Live patients were adults, rather than children as in this case, but Davis obtained consent from the girl’s parents. And the operations – brain, heart, and stomach surgery – seem no less risky than the one in this case.
So I can’t help but wonder whether the discrepancy between the responses on Twitter and on CiF stems from the medium itself, with those who use Twitter – and so responded via the network – much more likely to see the coverage in a positive light, and those on Comment is Free more likely to construe it negatively. (I can’t assess how many of those who commented on the CiF post use Twitter, so this is something of a shot in the dark).
Davis has responded several times in the comment thread to defend the journalistic value of her coverage, including this post:
I think one key dividing line about whether this is defensible is intention. If you’re just blindly seeking ratings for entertainment value, that’s pretty grim. But if your aim is to offer some kind of insight into the reality of the job surgeons face and the trials families have to go through, that seems quite different. Especially when it helps bring to light the importance of the health service, and how vital it is that we get the reforms right.
That said, I think the points you are raising are valid, and it’s important to raise them. There are certainly ways in which I could see this being done insensitively.
Yesterday we reported on the BBC Trust ruling that Panorama had broken editorial guidelines of fairness and accuracy in its programme Primark: On The Rack.
The BBC was ordered to make an on-air apology over the documentary, which was broadcast in June 2008, after the Trust said the programme contained footage that was likely not genuine.
Roy Greenslade said the Trust’s decision was “baffling”.
It goes against natural justice to find against the journalist and producers on what it calls “the balance of probabilities.”
Dan McDougall is an intrepid, award-winning investigative reporter with a superb record in exposing human rights violations.
Frank Simmonds is an experienced producer who has been responsible for many important revelatory Panorama programmes.
Yet this so-called judgment – which requires the corporation to apologise for the documentary – puts a black mark against their names on the most tenuous of grounds.
Having studied the report, I believe the Trust has got this wholly wrong.
